In Bill Moyers’s letter to The Chronicle last month in response to my post on his actions while in LBJ’s administration, Moyers refered to Jack Shafer’s piece in Slate as a sample from the Right wing noise machine. Shafer has a long follow-up to his original piece and Moyers’ reply here in Slate. Among Shafer’s statements is a reference to a defense Moyers wrote in Newsweek many years ago:
“What does Moyers say in the Newsweek column? The context in which the column appeared bears mentioning: Congressional hearings were revealing abuses of power at the FBI. According to the New York Times news story (Feb. 28, 1975, paid), Justice Department officials confirmed that Moyers had ‘asked the bureau to gather data on campaign aides to Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican Presidential candidate … on behalf of President Johnson a few weeks before Election Day. …’”
On the Mexican drug trade:
Secretary of State Clinton was in Mexico City last week, and she made a comment that, however utterly obvious and banal, marks a breakthrough in official government language about the war on drugs. “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” she said, and The New York Times
